Chapter 1: Vilified.
"So…you thought you could get away with this?" Vulpes asked, his voice cold as steel.
"It was inevitable—Caesars' tumour was too far along and had spread to his spinal cord. There is no way I could operate. It was only by your hand that I was forced to do so…hence why…Caesar is no longer with us." Arcade was bound and on his knees as the monstrous Vulpes stalked around him, waiting for the opportunity to find a flaw in his testimony. Arcade was justifiably scared at this moment in time—so much so that his usual witticisms and snipes have deserted him.
"Caesar died at your hands, so why should I not punish you? After all, 'an eye for an eye' is our motto around here…" He brandished a rusted Ripper knife at the frightened doctors' face and advanced perilously towards his left eye. Arcade instinctively clamped his eyes shut and held his breath. He hated the Legion, sure, but anything was better than this. He had to bite the bullet once and for all.
"If you let me live, I swear I can help you!" He gasped, imagining the sharp pain of his eye being gouged out. Vulpes threw the knife away and brought his face down to Arcades'.
"Help me? After what you did to Caesar?" He spat—both literally and figuratively.
"I had to do it, as my honour as a doctor, I had to let him go under anaesthetic. You may not want to hear this, but he was literally dying." Arcade had to change tack quickly as he was treading on dangerous grounds mentioning Caesars' weakness "Caesar was extremely strong to endure what he had, most others would not have even come close to what he had survived."
"Our Lord was in great pains, yes, but how is this relevant to what befalls you now?" Vulpes had stopped pacing at least—that was a good start in Arcades' book.
"I can help the Legion because I have advanced knowledge in medicine! If I go…what will happen to the injured and the sick?"
" They die. It is penalty for weakness."
"Injury in battle, maybe, but what about illness? Sometimes it is inevitable. Radiation poisoning, fevers…cancer. It happens to some of us. Even the Legion."
Vulpes' eyes narrowed into vicious slits.
"Like I said, they die. Our soldiers wouldn't have it any other way."
"But when they go, who will fill your ranks?"
"The prisoners we snatch from Tribes, of course."
"Let's say a plague hits the Legion camp. It spreads quickly and you have no doctors around and soldiers are dying. Who will fill your army then? You can't go battle a tribe of over a hundred warriors with so little men."
Vulpes pondered this scenario for a moment as Arcade eagerly awaited his answer. If this fails, he thought, I might as well kiss my ass goodbye.
"You could heal each and every one of those men?" Vulpes finally said.
"Maybe not all…but I would be able to identify the disease, treat most of them and try to find a way of preventing it from happening again. If you save the soldiers, you save time on training new ones. Your armies would literally swell to epic proportions, like the armies of old Rome."
"I can why Caesar chose you as his philosophical sparring partner…you have a certain way with words." He cut Arcade free and hoisted him up "So be it. You shall be reinstated as camp medic."
"It would be an honour." Yeah right, he thought grimly, it's an honour to serve you twisted fucks!
"And as for medicine…I don't care what you use, but make sure they don't get addicted to anything."
"I will require medical tools too." Arcade was pleased to be giving some orders.
"A search party will be sent forth to scour the Mojave tomorrow."